Samhain
by defying3reason
Summary: Piper is haunted over a few successive Halloweens. Contains spoilers for the Geoff Johns run and Countdown.


Intro: Piper

It's been a long, sucky year. To start things off, my parents were murdered and I was blamed for it; hell, I even believed I'd done it at first. So I quietly submitted myself to justice, but justice was not what I received. The torture they used at Iron Heights would have been considered cruel and unusual by 15th century standards, so I broke out.

Then I was manipulated by an old friend into making war on our former colleagues. I got out of that mess too, but my head was screwed with in the process and it took a couple months for me to feel like I was fully in control of my actions again. Then I infiltrated another operation and tried to help a friend's little cousin, and failed spectacularly. I was implicated in his death, so I had to go into hiding, and I got myself shackled to the Trickster, a 'friend' who has used me, belittled me and blackmailed me pretty much since we met. He's a conman, a disgusting liar and cheat, but to be fair he's also rather good at what he does.

He's so good I usually end up trusting him.

After a few months in his constant presence, hell I even started liking him. Most of the time I wanted to strangle him, but that was just nerves. When we weren't actively being shot at, we got along okay.

It doesn't matter anyway. James is dead. He was shot in the head and the chest, shielding me.

After my companion died (still shackled to me) I somehow teleported myself to Apokolips and had a showdown with one of Darkseid's more resilient underlings. In the process I found out my hypnotic abilities are a helluva lot more powerful than I've ever given them credit for (I suppose if I cared more about subverting free will I'd have picked up on it sooner or later). I made it back to Earth, attempted to go after the Rogues again, failed miserably (sensing a pattern) and got stabbed in the shoulder.

Suffice it to say, I haven't been in a good mood for a very long time. James found ways to make me smile while we were on the run together, but then he went and died for me and I can't even think of him without stirring up a cacophony of unpleasant emotions, first and foremost guilt and confusion.

I just don't understand why he did it. We were driving each other crazy until about two and a half minutes before his death. He's never shown that kind of potential for selflessness before. I guess the truth is I never knew him that well.

The worst of it is, I can't help but feel his sacrifice was wasted. I mean yes, I was able to do some damage on Apokolips, but I wasn't expecting to walk away from that. Since I've returned to Earth, I haven't really done anything productive despite this lofty ideal to be a more sincere do-gooder as a result of my brush with mortality. The thing is, I've alienated the heroes and the villains. I can't infiltrate and get useful information anymore, and I damn well can't ask the Flash for help either. Wally was pretty clear about not trusting me when James and I asked him for help.

Frankly I just kind of wish Deadshot had gotten me too.

Snippet: Trickster

While me and Piper were on the run together, I asked him what he thought about the afterlife. It seemed relevant. We were getting shot at and threatened pretty much constantly. Death could have conceivably hit us at any time, and I wanted a little more preparation.

We really do have a lot of options open to us, after all. For starters one of the major religions could have it right, which would mean Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, rebirth, Nirvana or whatever. Maybe even nothingness. Frankly I think Hell's the most likely for me. Even when I'd convinced myself I was going to be a 'good' guy, I did some pretty twisted shit, like that stunt with Boomer. Pretty sure if there's a God, He wouldn't be happy with me for disturbing the rest of the dead like that.

If I do wind up in Hell though, fingers crossed that I don't end up in Neron's realm. In addition to just being made of suck, that guy's already got it in for me and I'd like to at least meet up with a neutral devil.

Other options include possession, zombie, time travel, vampirism and probably loads of other shit I just can't think of off the top of my head. I'm sure if I'd spent more time hanging with the Top I could write a book on the afterlife. The man's certainly died and come back in enough bizarre ways all on his lonesome.

"So what do you think happens when you die?" I pressed Piper. He was cleaning up a scrape on his arm with the rusty brown water of a gas station bathroom and an ancient bottle of dial soap. I could tell I was pissing him off again, but I didn't much care. When I'm nervous I like to chat. When Piper's nervous he likes to brood. It's not a very good combination. "Pi-per!"

"I don't know James, doesn't everyone find a senator to possess and hatch a poorly conceived conspiracy bid for the presidency?" He snapped.

"I'm just making conversation." I said defensively. "We're shackled together for God knows how much longer, we may as well be friends."

Piper turned the water off and pulled his hood back up, effectively retreating from me. Between the distorting yellow lenses and that damn hood, I have a real hard time reading him.

"I thought we were friends." He said softly.

I stared at him a second, surprised at his words. "That's an interesting definition of friendship you've got there Piper. I blackmailed you. I insult you, I piss you off to no end-"

"Fine, we're not friends. Let's hurry. I think the gas station attendant is starting to come out of the trance I put him in."

"Alright, shove over. I've got itty bitty pieces of gravel in my cheek."

I wasn't really being fair. We were almost friends more than once. At least, Piper came to me for help a couple times and I always knew I could do the same if I needed to. He's a nice guy. The only Rogue I know with a functioning moral compass. Yeah, we might have had a nice friendship going if we'd both managed to get out of the zap-cuff thing alive. Thing is, I didn't. My life came to a spectacular and sudden end and despite what should have been more pressing concerns, in the back of my mind there was this constant little burning thought that Piper was still tethered to a decomposing body and that even in the best of circumstances he can hardly take care of himself.

I was worried. So yeah, apparently I do have a few non-selfish thoughts every now and then. It surprised me too.

Thankfully the first act in my afterlife was not an audience with Neron. I mean, I was a little curious to find out if ghosts can wet themselves or not, but I'll happily let someone else make that discovery. I actually found myself in a situation I'd never once prepared for. I was hovering over a Ouija board at a thirteen year old's Halloween themed slumber party.

"Are there any ghosties present?" The kid with the birthday crown asked.

"Don't call them ghosts Hailey, call them spirits!" A skinny girl wearing cat ears corrected.

"I like ghosties better-hey! It moved! Kelsey, was that you?" She asked the girl sitting across from her, also holding the pointer. I'd moved the thing to 'no'.

"Are you a girl or a boy?" The girl with the cat ears asked quickly. I got the pointer to 'B', but that was all that was necessary to get the roomful of squealy girls giggling and chatting.

"Guys shut up!" Hailey yelled, restoring some semblance of order. She considered a second before asking her next question. "Are you cute?" I moved the pointer to 'yes', which got them all giggling again.

Well come on, I'm not going to lie to kids.

Entertaining Hailey's birthday party was actually surprisingly fun. I'm good at working a crowd, and the girls were sweet. They kept me from thinking too much about, well, being a ghost to begin with and a distraction was definitely what I needed at the time. The girl with the cat ears, Kara, was quite the little artist. She drew a picture of me haunting chibi versions of the girls. I was just a little blurb with a ghost tail and a blue domino mask, but it came out cute and I was oddly flattered.

The girls turned in around midnight and by that point I'd discovered that I could bang on walls, flick light switches and flush toilets, so I gave them a twenty one flush salute to say goodbye.

I floated around the darkened house a little, wondering if I should venture outside or keep haunting the girls. While I was hovering around Hailey's kitchen trying to make up my mind, I found a calendar and noticed the date. It was October 31st.

Huh.

Now, my memory in regards to my death was pretty sketchy. I remembered running, being shot at, being very hungry and grungy and cranky. I remembered sneaking onto a train with Piper and actually having a pretty decent conversation with him (for once). I'd figured out that the gay jokes were out of line and if I wanted to piss off my companion a little less I should cut back…and then there was a big blank spot, so I figured I must have died sometime around there because the train was definitely the last clear memory I had.

Point is, that happened after October, but only by a month or so. So between death and the sleepover, there was a huge gap in time that I couldn't account for. Clearly I wasn't a ghost for my entire afterlife, and I found that more than a little puzzling.

I drifted out of Hailey's house, determined to figure out where I was and what the hell was going on.

Fragment: Piper

My shoulder was killing me. I made the mistake of taking on the Rogues again, without any help at all this time, and unfortunately I do have that history of failing miserably at everything I attempt on my own, so all I did was get myself implicated in Inertia's murder and stabbed through the shoulder with a spear. Damn that one smarted.

Itched too. I kept having to stop myself from scratching at it. I was pretty much impaled, and once that thing started to scab over I was constantly tempted to attack it with my fingernails, if not a butter knife.

I'd tried turning myself in to the Central police station for my involvement in Inertia's death (if only to keep Cold from using that one against me) but they said they couldn't hold me on self defense, no matter how much they wanted to. Upon release I went back to my childhood home, which has never been one of my favorite places to be and is even worse with the emotional baggage of my parents' murders hanging over it, but it's mine and I feel relatively safe there.

Sitting on a sofa in the empty living room with a can of soup and a rat perched on my knee, using all my will power not to scratch the gaping wound in my shoulder, I wasn't in a particularly good mood. It had been ages since I'd had a conversation with anyone other than rats. Though they're wonderful company, they don't talk back (I'm not that delusional…yet). In such circumstances, I'm a little prone to brooding.

So. There I sat, petting the rat to keep from scratching my shoulder and eating appallingly bad canned soup, feeling sorry for myself and wondering if there was any way I could actually make myself feel the slightest bit useful, when I heard the toilet flush on the second floor.

Thing is, I didn't hear anyone else in my house and _I would hear someone in my house_. I've got enhanced robotic hearing, for chrissakes.

I shot to my feet so suddenly that the poor little rat ran terrified for cover. Normally I feel bad about startling my friends, but in all honesty I barely noticed. I ran through the house to the stairwell, taking them two at a time and raced into the bathroom. I didn't turn the light on. The rays of approaching dawn just barely lit the empty room.

The pipes were still going, so I knew the toilet had flushed. I wasn't hearing things…but there was no one there.

Development: Trickster

With my fledgling haunting skills, I was only able to find my way to Piper in time to flush his toilet before I was pulled from the mortal plane again. I'm not sure what happens in between, but it was Halloween night again the next time I attained awareness. This time I didn't waste any time at a séance, but got right down to looking for Piper.

In all honesty, I was kinda worried I'd find him hovering around flicking light switches and playing with a Ouija board too. I don't really think much of his survival skills, and to be frank, during those five seconds I'd gotten to see him last Halloween he wasn't looking so hot. He was all gaunt and tired looking, and there was a big wad of bandages on his shoulder. Spend long enough handcuffed to someone and you'll start worrying about their well being.

Well, when you don't want to punch them in their whiny emo faces.

So anyway, I was worried about him and I went back to his old home to check up on him. He was still living there, but he looked a little better when I spied on him that year. He'd put some weight back on and his hair was a little longer, but he was still thinner than he'd been before we went on the run together and he was also still alone (unless you count his flea bag rats).

I really wanted to talk to him, but of course he didn't have a Ouija board handy. He was tinkering with one of his flutes, with newspapers spread out all around him. I scanned some of the headlines, catching myself up on what the Flash and the Rogues had been up to. Mostly the same old shit from the looks of it.

I was very displeased to see the punk who stole my stuff mentioned in the headlines. I can't believe Cold let that idiot in. I can't believe that idiot's still alive. They'd better kick his ass into becoming a decent Rogue if he's going to keep calling himself the Trickster, that's all I gotta say on that.

I watched Piper play with his flutes and his rats for a little while, strangely content just hovering near him. After a little while it did start to get old though, so I went into haunting mode and started rapping on the walls. I banged out 'shave and a hair cut two bits' a few times, and had a good laugh watching Piper look around the room, shaking his head and listening with his freaky super hearing. I was on my third repetition of 'shave and a hair cut' when he whispered my name.

Then dawn came and my connection faded.

I managed to check back on Piper for the next couple of Halloweens, and to my intense displeasure I watched things actually get worse for him. I kept out this faint flicker of hope that he'd mend fences with Flash or something, and I'd find him busting some tacky Halloween crime with the scarlet dipshit or maybe handing out candy while Linda took the kids trick-or-treating. Hell, even watching It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown with his rats in a real house would've been nice.

Nope. For the next two years he was recovering from some sort of injury, looking malnourished and underweight. He'd figured out I was there…at least, I think he did. There's the possibility he just wanted me to be haunting him enough that he started talking to me. Of course he wouldn't have done anything thoughtful like sought out a Ouija board so I could talk back. Instead he just sat on the floor in a little rat covered ball, pouring out his misery to me and all I could do was flick the lights on and off and flush a toilet to let him know I heard him.

I'd had enough. I tapped out 'shave and a haircut' to let him know I was leaving and went out in search of one of my old stashes of gear. I wasn't sure this would work, what with my very limited ability to move things in the land of the living, but I had to try.

I was able to knock over a few boxes in one of my storage units (which thankfully still had a few years of automatic alias-made payments before the company would clear it out and rent it to someone living). The contents of the box spilled over the concrete floor, and I looked through them until I found the stub of a black candle. Here's what I'd been worrying about. I really wasn't sure I'd be able to light the thing.

Luckily for me I was dealing with a piece of black magic. As soon as my dead hand passed through the candle, it sprang to life, bathing everything in my storage locker in an eerie green light and sending me off for an audience with Neron.

Musing: Piper

Crime fighting in Keystone City isn't really a pleasant vocation, but it's made much easier when you have help from the Flashes. Hell, it was downright pleasant when I had Wally's friendship and a set of useful contacts and old favors to call in. Being a pariah to both sides sucks, royally.

There's a little convenience store a couple blocks from the end of my parents' driveway (which makes it about a thirty minute walk from the front door). I'd gotten into the habit of showing up around midnight in my street clothes and buying first aid supplies, newspapers and frozen dinners. I think the girl who worked that shift thought I was some kind of serial killer. She had that frozen smile and that 'no sudden movements' attitude I remember some of the Gotham guys bringing out in people. I usually left a sizable tip on the counter to make up for scaring her.

One night I ran into some trouble with a street gang. It was really kind of pathetic. Nothing meta or costumed was going on, it was just some assholes with knives mugging some vapid rich kids who hadn't realized where they'd wandered, but I'd gotten dizzy and I'd gotten banged up more than usual. The dizzy spells were starting to worry me, actually.

Anyway, I limped into the convenience store, keeping my hands over my side to hide a spreading bloodstain in my sweatshirt and purchased the gauze, tape, thread and disinfectant I needed as quickly as I was able. Thankfully, the girl didn't notice, but then she tries to avoid making eye contact with me.

"Alright Hartley…" I coached myself. "Now all you have to do is walk back up the road and up th-the…driveway. Oh God…" By the time I made it to the rusty front gates I was hunched over, and when I was less than halfway up the front lawn I'd considered crawling the rest of the way. My hands were really sticky and I was dizzy again.

I sat down to take a break, leaning against a tree and breathing heavily. I looked down at my sweatshirt and noticed that it was pretty well saturated with my blood. "Wonderful." I muttered.

Then I heard footsteps in my parents' house.

'Damn, damn, damn!' I thought wearily. "I can' do…can't do this now." I whimpered. Whoever it was that had snuck in to kill me really needn't have bothered. Even if I did make it up to the house, my hands weren't steady enough to take care of the stab wound.

I was curious though, so I hefted myself up and dragged myself the rest of the way to the house. Sneaking in was thoroughly out of the question, since I was in so much pain I could barely walk. Besides, I really didn't care about being killed anymore, I'd just kind of hoped I could go out gloriously, doing something that made me feel like my life wasn't a waste. Die in a Crisis like Barry Allen had or something. That sounded good.

I opened the door, limped into the hall and promptly fell over. I heard a few of the rats squealing and scrabbling over to me, and wondered if despite the camaraderie we'd shared they might not eat me while I was bleeding out.

Then someone lifted me up. My eyelids had gotten pretty heavy, so I didn't really see what was going on, but I heard the rats scrabbling after us and a familiar voice muttering to himself while he carried me. "Such a goddamn idiot…left you alone too long…" Then I blacked out.

When I woke up again I was in an unfamiliar bedroom. It was very clean and there was a tray of medical supplies laid out on a TV tray next to the bed. My stab wound had been treated, and so had some of the smaller injuries I'd picked up over the past few months. I was starting to worry about them, actually. I had a few cuts and bumps that weren't healing well and looked like they might have been infected, but I considered that a part of living in a dilapidated old house. The dust and mold didn't agree with my habit of getting the ever living shit beaten out of me on a semi-regular basis.

I heard some noise in the next room over. A man was swearing as he struggled with some sort of plastic container. Something inside the container was squeaking.

"Alright you little flea bags, just stay still and let me open it! Damn. And for the record I didn't like that trip anymore than you did! The pet carrier would have balanced a lot better on the tricycle if you shits had just stayed still."

"James?" I couldn't make sense of any of his rambling, but that was clearly the Trickster standing in the next room. I sat up, which was a bad idea, and ended up flat on the bed again trying not to clutch at the freshly bandaged stab wound on my abdomen.

Okay, so I must have still been alive. I'm hoping when I do die that there will be a little less pain. But James had been dead for years…

He opened the bedroom door, noticed I was awake and turned on the light. James pulled up a chair by my bedside and smiled warmly at me, looking both familiar and nothing like I remembered. "Hey Piper."

"You're dead."

"Uh huh. You came pretty close to it yourself, moron." He said with a laugh.

"I watched you die. I…" I was the reason for it, but I couldn't get myself to say it. "Is this real? You're really back?"

He reached over and pinched my shoulder. "Yep. So should I hatch a conspiracy plot for the presidency?" He asked with a wink. I smiled, despite myself.

"Nah, you'd need to possess a senator first."

"Right, right."

"James, where the hell are we?" I asked. I had a vague idea, based on the noises I was getting from the street. Definitely an urban environment, but I couldn't tell much else.

"This is an old place of mine that I kept up in Central. Well…I had a little trouble getting it back since my death was publicized…not as well publicized as I'd have liked, but whatever. Your place was big, but while you've got a gaping wound I was thinking we should hang someplace a little more sterile."

"Can't argue with that."

"I brought some of your rats with me." He went back into the other room and showed me an empty pet carrier, throwing the one-sided conversation I'd overheard into a little bit of context. About a dozen rats scampered in after him, crawled up the bed and settled on me for nuzzles. I lazily pet one that had curled up on my chest.

"Thank you."

"You're very welcome. So…d'ya need anything? I figured you'd want the flea bags since they're always around, but I wasn't sure if there was anything else at your house I should've grabbed." James said, bouncing around with nervous energy.

"I'm fine, thank you. Um, James…"

"Yeah?" He sat down again, attention focused on me. Okay, didn't expect that.

"Why are you doing this?"

"Huh?"

"You were just resurrected. Why are you helping me?" I asked, genuinely confused.

"Dude, you suck at taking care of yourself." He said with a laugh. "I checked up on you for a few Halloweens. For some reason that's the only night I could haunt-"

"In some pagan religions, Samhain is considered to be the night of the year where the barrier between the living and the dead is at its weakest. I guess there's some truth to it." I put in.

"Yeah, whatever. Anyway, every time I went and looked for you, you were alone and doing really shitty. Clearly you can't take care of yourself, so now I'll have to."

"I'd have thought that once you got free of the zap-cuffs you'd never want to see me again." I said with a frown.

James rolled his eyes. "See? Smart as you are, you're really just a moron. Rest up Hartley, you look like ass." He stood to go, so I weakly reached out and grabbed his arm. I still couldn't quite get my head around it.

"You're really back? You'll be here when I wake up?"

"Promise."

"Alright."

End: Trickster

I'll probably regret it someday, but for now I actually think I got the better side of the bargain. I got my life back, and in the process got the opportunity to make sure Hartley gets someone to look out for him. He deserves it. Selfless idiots like that can get themselves into a lot of trouble. He needs someone disgustingly selfish to balance him out.

What's one little soul? Especially one that's been through everything I've done to mine. I really don't think it was worth the price I got for it anyway.

Besides, I'm the Trickster. I'm sure I'll think of a way to get it back before my payment comes due.


End file.
